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THE 
LARGER LIFE 



By MR FORD 

ART : A COMMODITY 

THE EMBELLISHMENT OF LIFE 

THE ART OF FOLLY 



THE 
LARGER LIFE 



BY 



SHERIDAN FORD 



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NEW YORK 
GEORGE E. CROSCUP & CO. 



MCMIV 



----- --— : :■---.-■: — " ~ 

{LiBRARYot CONGRESS 
Twe Oopies Received 

MAY 12 1904 
t~ Gepyrteht Entry 

GLASS Q. XXc. NO. 

COPY B 



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}9o4- 



Copyright, 1904 
By Sheridan Ford 



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' ' ' ' ' . * :' , 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



To 
FRANKLIN FORD 

rHE circling Spheres go racing down the voids, 
And the inconstant Seasons change and fade, 
While one ttnfading and ennobling Faith 
Flames in your mental skies ; fair as the dawn 
That ushers in the glad and triumphing day 
When Truth, the Ultimate, the Avenger, 
Shall bear to men the tidings Be of hope ! 
The earnest of the iiew intelligence 
When she shall still the old, unhappy Fear, 
And scatter blessings where all faith was dead, 
And drive Despair, unfriended, to the Pit. 

The sane and vivid vision that you saw 

When all the world was blind or would not see, 

Shall yet enrich the nation of your pride 

With organized, august publicity ; 

Yet clear the Temple of the Verbalists 

And function blithe Factfinders ere they pass 

To the Unbroken Silence toil endears. 

And if , for a brief space, the stealing hours 
May darken counsel and make wild the ways 
That lead to Unity ; ah, then not less 
Shall men of mettle muster to the Catise, 
The old, good Cause that will not be denied 
Till hag-rid Chaos, vanquished, flees the field, 
Nor scapes the end, the appointed end, that waits 
When ordered Truth shall wing the laughing word. 



S. F. 



CONTENTS 



Dedication : The circling Spheres go racing down 

voids 

I I live in no mean Republic, myself . . 

II The sorceries of the inventive mind 

III The unities thro' Commerce are forming 

IV The distinctions are never hard or fast 
V The new State is a system of organs 

VI In the wide revision of working-lines . 

VII Commerce is the moving Spirit of Man 

VIII It was Commerce invented integrity 

IX The clash of interest that frightens some 

X The Self, in relation, has ever been . . 

XI It is the story of social progress . . . 

XII The social is but man in relation . . 

XIII Scientific truth is ceasing to be . . . 

XIV Thro' lack of political science . . . 

XV As men but divide the better to work . 

XVI The call of the hour is to clearly know 

XVII Men govern, as they are governed in turn 

XVIII The unconscious ones are the amateurs 

XIX In the mental darkness men stab and slay 

XX While Invention is building new highways 

XXI The powerful prepossessions of men , , 



the 



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CONTENTS 



XXII Every normal enterprise upon earth 

XXIII The American Runnymede is on . . 

XXIV The tangle of statute must yield to Law 
XXV As progress is from private to public 

XXVI The compelling commercial unities . 

XXVII In the fading English statute-books . 

XXVIII The new Title Guarantee companies 

XXIX The Bank is an organ of government 

XXX The system of credit clearing-houses 

XXXI The Railway Traffic Association . . 

XXXII The labour Trusts are governing organs . 

XXXIII The future of the joint-stock principle . . 

XXXIV The wage-payer that fears the labour Trusts 
XXXV The proposal to change the present form . 

XXXVI The sense of a sovran community . . . 

XXXVII The theorists talk of majorities . : . . 

XXXVIII The peddling of ballots to every man . . 

XXXIX The essential truth of the universe . „ . 

XL When the bonny Blue Flag went down in 

blood 

XLI America is grinding its colours .... 

XLII The real man of letters is en route . . . 

XLIII The fretful chaos in literature 

XLIV The newspaper men of the passing hour . 

XLV The journals of the Tar and Feather school 

XLVI The Obvious has been so exhausted . . 

XLVII Yet other journals as freely assert . . . 

XLVIII The phrase 'independent journalism' . . 

XLIX The thought of integrity in news .... 

L When the arch-thief Tweed had looted New 

York 



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CONTENTS 



LI The machinery of intelligence . . . 

LII In a trial for murder by poison . . . 

LIU Ye shall know the truth, said the clear-eyed Christ 

LIV The greatest ' sensation ' is that of truth 

LV The commanding thought of integrity . 

LVI Education is contact with ordered life 

LVII The question of women's ' equality ' . 

LVIII The dream has been of developing Self 

LIX So the Self is universal organ . . . 

LX The long hope of the sanguine ' reformer 

LXI Fifty years of excessive repression 

LXII The antient, eternal duel of Sex . . 

LXIII The social body needs freedom to move 

LXIV The common notion of brotherly love 

LXV As all sound Religion is one with life 

LXVI My God is not of a ghostly Beyond . 

Epilogue : What is truth ? cried the curious Pilate 

Notes 



IX 

PAGE 
6 9 

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92 

94 



95 

97 



THE LARGER LIFE 



I live in no mean Republic, myself, 

And know the quiet aims 
That the moving intelligence brings to men 

Unsung of climbing fames. 

The faith of Democracy lights the land 

From sentried sea to sea; 
And degrading opinion does not thrive 

Since fact has functioned free. 

Lo, this is the nation where two and two 

When added make but four, 
And never five, as the Primitives said 

That failed to keep the score. 



2 THE LARGER LIFE 

The men of To-morrow are on the march, 

And antient fictions fade, 
For the Fact-finders carry full-circle 

Where truth is wooed by trade. 

The bars are down between thought and act, 

The seeing soul is freed ; 
The expression is one with Life itself, 

And action, one with creed. 

II 
The sorceries of the inventive mind 

Make this the Golden Age, 
For pagan myths are usual and mild 

Since Science turned the page. 

Electric wires in mystic meshes stretch 

And thrill the girdled earth, 
Till space is sensitized from pole to pole 

For every fact of worth. 



THE LARGER LIFE 

And the wireless messages come and go 

Where'er the need is found, 
As intelligence travels like magic 

The grey globe round and round. 

The telephone of the tremulous coil 

That parted voices span, 
Has conquered long distance and given birth 

To the Freed Speech of man. 

And out of the calling cities and towns, 

And down the steel-flung trail, 
The spirit of steam goes quiring to men 

The paean of the rail. 

And free of the far-shimmering harbours, 

The Liners race and run 
To the jocund beat of the plunging Screws 

That make the nations one ; 



4 THE LARGER LIFE 

They float the flag of Commercial Romance 

From zone to farther zone ; 
The old flag that the austral fires have blazed, 

The boreal night has known. 

Ill 
The unities thro' Commerce are forming 1 

That yield the perfect State ; 
The individual functions to the full, 

The credit-paths are straight. 

The related man reaches to action 

In Nature's vast machine, 
A part of the world-moving organism, 

Subjected yet serene. 

The rim is in clear call of the centre, 

The centre of the rim ; 
And the battery where the Fact-finder sits 

Marks oneness to the brim. 



THE LARGER LIFE 5 

When the part is in order with the whole, 

In tranquil touch sans strife, 
Friction is lessened to the point of ease, 

And lo, the larger life ! 

So the two enthusiasms of men — 

The Study and the Mart — 
Are to shed their exclusive pretensions, 

And seek a common art. 

IV 

The distinctions are never hard or fast. 

Physical science men 
Are failing to locate matter so far 

In all their pregnant ken : 

Each new isolation is found to be 

A new relation still, 
And so the relationship stretches on 

Beyond their midway skill. 



THE LARGER LIFE 

A crystal thought is the concept that rose 
Thro' study of man's frame; 2 

His sympathetic and cerebral nerves 
Reveal organic aim. 

Applying the thought to the social form, 

The State is seen to be 
A supreme work of art that is fashioned 

To ply in sympathy : 

For in treating it men have proceeded, 

Thro* painful ways and slow, 
By the only pattern provided them 

In Life's unpausing flow. 

v 
The new State is a system of organs, 

And thro' each pulsing part 
The moving intelligence comes and goes 

To shape the social art. 



THE LARGER LIFE 7 

Ere the general interest functions, 

And consciousness is clear, 
A few unrelated class interests 

Are causing idle fear. 

They type the false growths round a broken joint 

Within the frame of man 
If the setting has been too long delayed 

To suit the surgeon's plan. 

So Commerce acts as re-forming agent, 

In brutal guise but sure, 
Thro' the incoming of the newer thought — 

The Competition Cure ! 

VI 

In the wide revision of working-lines 

That nurtured needs invite, 
The competitive principle appears 

In a redeeming light. 



THE LARGER LIFE 

While the many are viewed as competing 

When all are righting each 
Thro' the tendering of lower prices, 

That hasty Cheap Jacks teach — 

To view it from the numerical point, 

And from that point alone, 
Is to overlook the play of the Trust 

Where quality is shown. 

With the saner and centralized action, 

Competition may rise 
To include the possible price-cutting 

That keen consumers prize. 

To advance each division of Commerce 

Unto the higher plane 
Is to follow the Law of Production 

That merges art and gain. 






THE LARGER LIFE 

The finer quality and lower price 

Compel the larger sale: 
This simple rule of the unified Trust 

Was never born to fail. 

Competition is but the social force 

Trained on a common end : 
'T is unthinkable between men and things 

Save thro' a social trend. 

VII 

Commerce is the moving Spirit of Man 3 

That stands for every act, 
As the collective division of labour 

That turns upon the fact. 

The primary division of labour 

In the organic State 
Lies midway between the fact and the act, 

For Science to relate : 



io THE LARGER LIFE 

It is the intelligence division — 
The news trade, if you please — 

That has to rise to the level of fact, 
Or scientific ease : 

For no State can reach organization, 

Authentic and sun-clear, 
Till division between the fact and act 

Is ordered and austere. 

There 's division but not separation — 
As known to central sight — 

For the fact is completed in the act 
When thought is winged in flight. 

Our reliance on the astronomer 
To learn the hour and place 

To best observe an eclipse of the sun - 
The points in time and space — 



THE LARGER LIFE n 

Will convey the abounding relation 

Between the fact and deed, 
For the fact is one side of the action — 

The side that has the lead. 

VIII 

It was Commerce invented integrity 
And gave to Truth her wings ; 

And the social salvation principle 
Still unto Commerce clings. 

It is clearly on profit-seeking lines 
(Which dowered pedants flout) 

That the social reorganization 
Is being brought about. 

The simple and free-working relation 

In which the classes meet 
Was not born of the charity concept, 

Or sentimental bleat. 



12 THE LARGER LIFE 

As men are brave to the point of parting 

From their Utopian dreams, 
They confess that Commerce, the butt of cant, 

Lights life with saving gleams. 

IX 

The clash of interest that frightens some 

Is music to my ears, 
For I catch in its torn and tangled chords, 

Of crowding hopes and fears, 

The undertones of the process thro' which 

Society shall reach 
Unto the last differentiation 

The unities may teach, 

And so come at last, in God's own good hour, 

To see its Self in deed 
As a living and thriving organism 

In touch with every need. 



THE LARGER LIFE 13 

The division but marks the relation 4 

In any age or clime, 
For the onward sweep of the principle 

Is one with lapsing Time, 
x 
The Self, in relation, has ever been 

The Charmer of mankind, 
As the binding-force of society 

And driving-force of mind. 

The old conception of politics 

Put Self and State apart, 
And the separation was frozen hard 

In Blackstone's static art; 

But the influence that brought it about 

Will make it disappear, 
For the locomotive and telegraph 

Have drawn the Distant near. 



i 4 THE LARGER LIFE 

The old, separate classifications 

Marked separated men ; 
With the elimination of distance, 

They seek a common ken. 

The collective action has grown so fierce 

That organs of the whole 
Are transcending the classifications 

That traced the old control. 

XI 

It is the story of social progress 

Of communication born, 
That the Spirit of Inquiry opened 

When mind saluted morn. 

The lure of the Purple Distance has been 

The stimulus of thought, 
As to fathom its fabled mysteries 

The old Fact-finders wrought. 



THE LARGER LIFE 15 

The unceasing hunt of the absolute, 

The always burning dream 
To break the Great Silence that grimly rounds 

Death's immemorial gleam, 

Was ever in close alliance with those 

That tracked, thro' evil days — 
As the daring conquerors of distance — 

The world's uncharted ways: 

The philosopher and geographer 

Have had a common quest : 
The adventure of thought, the flight of mind, 

Has wooed them East and West. 

XII 

The social is but man in relation, 

As, in this time and place, 
There is nothing outside for hope or fear 

To qualify or trace, 



16 THE LARGER LIFE 

All action is social from first to last, 

And government is seen 
As collective action that types the Self 

Where common needs are keen. 

It is only division of labour, 5 
(Whate'er the State men claim), 

And it has to be fairly recognized 
As ordered private aim. 

The functions of government, far and near, 

Are individual led, 
For, strange to say, every organ of State 

Has a Self at its head. 

It is always the individual, 

However seen or shown, 
Thro' his 'public' or 'private' relation 

At any moment known. 



THE LARGER LIFE 17 

There is no clear evidence yet to prove 

That action by the State 
Is more in the interest of the whole 

Than private deeds equate. 

Government and Commerce go hand in hand. 

The organs of control 
Arise with the forming consciousness 

Of the collective whole. 

The source of all law, or government, 

Is scientific fact, 
As the courts of arbitration assume 

In measuring an act. 

The long quest is political science 

Since Runnymede arose 
To type Democracy's idea 

Where'er her bugle blows. 



18 THE LARGER LIFE 

XIII 

Scientific truth is ceasing to be 

The province of the few, 
For, woven into the life of the world, 

It functions thro' and thro'. 

There are no scientific subjects 

As lettered prigs maintain, 
The subject of Science is all of Life, 

Its laughter and its pain. 

What the shrewd chemists call exact knowledge 

Is order in the deed, 
For any subject is scientific 

When all its facts are freed. 

The incoming science of politics 

Is the science of news. 
The compulsion that resides in a Fact 

Gives Life its moving cues. 



THE LARGER LIFE 19 

XIV 

Thro' lack of political science 

The Social Quacks debate 
In all manner of mindless jargon 

Over the coming State. 

Once political science is ordered, 

The vain dispute will cease, 
And, like the working astronomers, 

Men may confer in peace. 

The literature of the groping mind 

Insistently appeals 
To the unified soldiers of Science 

To trace the Law that heals. 

Society must be objectified 

Thro' systematic rule 
Till the State is seen as an organism, 

Or scientific tool. 



20 THE LARGER LIFE 

The old organs that once were classified 

As ' government ' alone, 
Must be set in relation to the whole, 

And integration shown. 
xv 
As men but divide the better to work 

Unto a common end, 
The division of labour principle 

Is world-wide in its trend. 

The advance of the Self turns upon it 

And, as division clears, 
The dawn of the governing principle 

In sunny guise appears. 

So the true evolution of Commerce 
And, therefore, of the State, 

Is one with the division of labour — 
The moving hand of fate. 



THE LARGER LIFE 21 

The far-seeing science of politics 

Has deftly to reveal 
The major and the minor divisions 

That form the commonweal. 

So the Self will be set in relation 

To the collective soul, 
And the freed divisions of social force 

Marked in the marching whole. 

XVI 

The call of the hour is to clearly know 

The trend in time and space 
Of the fierce, world-compelling agencies 

That Commerce has to face. 

The locomotive and electric wire 

Flash into full relief 
The elimination of distance — 

Of modern facts, the chief. 



22 THE LARGER LIFE 

Comes the resultant co-ordination, 

The new conceit of Life, 
And political science emerges 

To lessen civil strife. 

Direct rule by the individual 

Is passing into act, 6 
And Society finally faces 

Self-government in fact. 

XVII 

Men govern, as they are governed in turn, 

Thro' each relation shown, 
They mould and are moulded with every 
thought, 

However named or known. 

Tho' the ballot-crazed Socialists murmur, 

We all vote day and day, 
In addition to formal occasions 

That free the nose-count play. 



THE LARGER LIFE 23 

The path-finder of the uplifting force 

Governs his fellowmen 
Thro' revealing the mental direction 

That lights their lesser ken. 

A clerk may outvote his official chief 

In the compelling case, 
And force the authentic action to life 

For unborn years to face. 

We rule in proportion to all our light 

As measured by the fact 
We bring to the centres of social sway 

To shape the ordered act. 

All kinds of Elections are hourly held 

To fix the fate of man, 
And seal the august and final decrees 

Beyond our guess or plan. 



24 THE LARGER LIFE 

XVIII 

The unconscious ones are the amateurs 

Of science and the arts. 
Those that aim at political healing 

Must know the social parts. 

The ordered and ordering mind is rare, 

And when it comes in view 
It will either be crowned or crucified 

To suit the ruling crew. 

Till the right is ready, might is right 

Down all Life's tragic slope; 
The Bigot says should; but Science says is, 

And lightens toil with hope. 

XIX 

In the mental darkness men stab and slay: 

Publicity sheds light. 
The normal direction is ever found 

Thro* seeing fact aright: 



THE LARGER LIFE 25 

Thus Democracy's only salvation 

Is still to organize: 
So shall it pass to the higher plane, 

So, and not otherwise. 

Intelligence is organization, 

For unity of need — 
So light making in its ultimate trend — 

Will never darken deed. 

Scientific inquiry is the most 

Levelling thing on earth; 
It punctures pretence and tears away masks 

With democratic mirth. 

xx 
While Invention is building new highways 

For ideas and men, 
The Social Atheists 'view with alarm ' 7 

The shifting social ken. 



26 THE LARGER LIFE 

They denounce the dawning development 

They cannot understand, 
And believe they ' should ' make of the not-Self 

The Big Drum of the band. 

With minds not narrowed by knowledge, they 
tilt 

At everything in sight, 
As tho' the Almighty had botched His job, 

And boggled wrong and right. 

They blame this and that social violence; 

But ever fail to see 
The healing influence at work thro' all 

That makes for unity. 

They seem as powerless to comprehend 

The freedom of the time 
As their English brothers in 'Twenty-five 

That called steam-cars 'a crime ' : 



THE LARGER LIFE 27 

When the art of Stephenson gave to Life 

The locomotive-fact, 
There were those that affirmed it would frighten 

The cows along the track ! 

The mere stage-coaches of literature, 

Seen of the primal need, 
They lacked the unified consciousness 

To trace the thought in deed. 

But while the Social Atheists babble 

(And Babblers always shirk), 
Self-interest, the duct of Sympathy, 

Does its appointed work. 

XXI 

The powerful prepossessions of men 

Prevent their seeing clear, 
So that the newer governing organs 

Are met with wakeful fear. 



2S THE LARGER LIFE 

Instantaneous communication 

Forbids the static dream 
That the State is a single-centred thing, 

A fixed and * finished ' scheme. 

Democracy is not single-centred 
As formless minds have taught, 

New centres of regulation arise, 
By new conditions wrought. 

The new conditions compel new views 

Of government and life, 
For each classification of Commerce 

Brings order out of strife. 

Effective action turns upon the fact. 

'T is pleasant to be right, 
In the little thing, as the larger need 

When nations strip for fight. 



THE LARGER LIFE 29 

XXII 

Every normal enterprise upon earth 

Involves the common good, 
For each is an organ of government 

If rightly understood. 

It is Commerce, and Commerce! all the time, 

And has been thro' the years; 
The Self and the general good are touched 

With kindred hopes and fears. 8 

The elective Washington government 

Types the old English king, 
In its harassing Trust legislation 

To which the law courts cling. 

Men see the State as a separate fact 

(As King John thought he saw !), 
And the ' public ' and ' private ' are set apart 

In politics and law. 



30 THE LARGER LIFE 

The false separation between the two 

Must pass from ordered Life 
To the end that free action may follow, 

With less unsocial strife. 

XXIII 

The American Runnymede is on 

In law courts of the land 
Where the old and jealous elective king 

Is juggling for command. 

It is there the battle is being fought, 

For there the verdicts wait 
To clear the new organs of government 

That clutch the keys of State. 

The play of the governing principle 

Compels the larger view; 
But the recognition must come thro' the courts 

To rule the action true, 



THE LARGER LIFE 31 

As the court was the first legislature, 

So it will be the last, 
Unless the new State is to plagiarize 

The folly of the past. 

When Warwick, the king-maker, failed to note 

The old conditions fade, 
He went down in the crush of the newer thought, 

And was himself unmade. 

XXIV 

The tangle of statute must yield to Law. 

Self-government is near, 
For the play of the Self protects the whole — 

When the parts are in gear. 

The decaying juridic ideas 

That block industrial change 
Will be brushed aside by the newer need 

Till Trade has room to range. 



32 THE LARGER LIFE 

The Law is no longer a static thing 

Pent in a narrow groove, 
And shackled to timorous precedent 

Without the grit to move : 

'T is the marching, moulding intelligence 

That strikes offenders down ; 
'T is the bodyguard of integrity 

That justice waits to crown : 

It moves in the changeful movement of Life, 

With freed conditions fraught ; 
Still questing for the inviolate fact — 

The arbiter of thought. 

xxv 
As progress is from private to public, 

The semi-public stage 
Is the interregnum that troubles men 

Ere Science sets the gauge. 



THE LARGER LIFE 33 

The recognized organs of government 

Reveal the Self in deed ; 
The post-office, army, and court of law, 

Mark the collective need ; 

But the unrecognized organs, also, 

Are government in kind, 
Tho' denied of the Social Atheist 

That lacks the moving mind. 

At one time the coining of money 
Was wrought by private hand, 

Ere the increasing communication 
Gave the new State command. 

The telephone and the telegraph lines 

Will come in time to be 

But extensions of the post-office Trust, 

When functioned full and free: 
3 



34 THE LARGER LIFE 

The Communication system must reach 

To unity at last, 
For the separate and the sundered thing 

Is of the storied past. 

XXVI 

The compelling commercial unities 

Loom large on every hand 
As incoming organs of government 

To regulate the land. 

They are all a part of society 

And to be treated so, 
Or the war cry of a false socialism 

Will work the nation's woe. 

The Trust is in line with the verities, 

And verities succeed, 
While the bankrupt trader of retail-mind 

Laments the larger need. 



THE LARGER LIFE 35 

Any Trust not based on a social want 

Will meet its factless fate 
In the march of the keen competition 

That builds the better State. 

In current trade wars of supremacy 

That focus public gaze, 
The public forgets that in every war 

The lonesome loser pays. 

The limit of commercial government 

Is that which limits all — 
The need of being infallibly right 

When stern Occasions call. 

XXVII 

In the fading English statute-books 

The Act may still be found 
That forbade the forming of partnerships 

On any English ground ; 



36 THE LARGER LIFE 

It was said that they boded woeful harm 

To individual need! 
And that is the one continuing thought 

Of the false-social creed. 

The great English industrial barons — 
The Trust men of their day — 

Grew tired of the old king's exactions, 
And drew the sword to slay : 

Then spurious authority vanished 

Before the show of fact, 
And the Strong Men and their associates 

Wrested the right to act. 

That is armoured Democracy's lesson 
When read between the lines; 

With a freer commercial suggestion 
Than history assigns. 



THE LARGER LIFE 37 

It is the eld denial of freedom 

To individual rights, 
That spurs the militant, triumphing Self 

To proud, heroic fights. 

XXVIII 

The new Title Guarantee companies 

Reveal the restful rise 
Of the competent governing organs 

That men of insight prize. 

The old, blundering register of deeds 

Could only be displaced 
By inventing a scientific tool, 

With surer system graced. 

The Guarantee people bet on their facts, 
And back their point of view; 

As infallible Science guards the game 
To keep the action true. 



38 THE LARGER LIFE 

XXIX 

The Bank is an organ of government 

That moves the ordered way, 
For its clearing-house legislature meets 

And functions, day and day. 

There the private and public good are seen 

Serenely unified, 9 
In a legislature where all 'bad ' bills 

Are lightly tossed aside. 

The publicity is so absolute 

That rim with centre vies; 
Intelligence identifies as law, 

And lies are stamped as lies. 

The new clearing-house form of government 

Can't be divorced from right, 
For the pretty reason that fact and act 

Are parallel in sight. 



THE LARGER LIFE 39 

The main-governing centre of money 

Is where the news is known ; 
And as country banks report to New York, 

It rules the fiscal throne. 

xxx 
The system of credit clearing-houses 

Now clears the credit fact 
By reporting thro' all its centres 

A buyer's last known act. 

When the trading firms of a given line 

Clear all their credit news, 
The totalling of the collated facts 

Clinches the credit clues. 

The old mercantile agency gossips 

Traded in talk and guess. 
The clearing-house system trades in the fact, 

And stops at fact, no less. 



40 THE LARGER LIFE 

It is not what the buyer says or thinks; 

But what he does that breeds. 
The ledger tosses opinion aside, 

And tells of moving deeds. 

A * rating ' is old in forty-eight hours, 

And pointless in a day, 
For the newer action compels new thought, 

And thrusts the old away. 

So the out-of-date credit reporting 

Lacked systematic rule 
In that it merely perverted the fact, 

Without a guiding tool. 

The newspapers mangle intelligence 

As credit news was wrought 
Ere Science invented the clearing-house, 

And mastered credit thought. 



THE LARGER LIFE 41 

XXXI 

The Railway Traffic Association 

Is organ of the whole, 
Tho* the elective king bars its function, 

And fights it for control : 

The result is but railway confusion 

Divorced from guiding will. 
When the railways legislate for themselves 

They do so with some skill. 

Would fifty or more traffic managers 

Allow a warring one 
To peril the interest of the class, 

When all was said and done? 

With intelligence properly organized, 

The rapid, railway mind 
Would pillory the rebel offender 

As outcast of his kind. 



42 THE LARGER LIFE 

If the new State were not organic, 

A railway could not be 
Compelled to haul a competitor's car 

That action might be free. 

XXXII 

The labour Trusts are governing organs, 

And will be more and more 
As their captains, fronting the larger need, 

The larger law explore. 

Some brilliant ability is required 

To mould two million men 
In a compact and working unity 

With but a single ken. 

That not three in ten of the wage-takers 

Are so far organized ; 
But proves that concurrent majorities 

Are not to be despised. 



THE LARGER LIFE 43 

When every wage-taker is in a Trust, 

As science men would like, 
The current confusion will disappear 

With 'lockouts ' and the ' strike.' 

Then the money chief and the labour chief, 

Unswayed by hate or fear, 
May bring all of their facts to a centre, 

And rule the action clear. 

XXXIII 

The future of the joint-stock principle 

Is one with that of wage, 
And both are involved in the settlement 

Of pensions for old age. 

In the oncoming wage arbitrations, 

The labour men may plead 
The justice point in the dividend rate, 

As well as labour's meed. 



44 THE LARGER LIFE 

When the wage rate is to be reckoned with, 

So is the dividend ; 
The governing principle cuts both ways 

For equity to fend. 

If the 'right ' to discharge a wage-taker 

By the wage-paying side 
Without the consent of a labour Trust, 

Is still to be denied: 

Then the wage-payer has another 'right,' 

And that must clearly be 
That no wage-taker shall quit his task 

Till those that hire agree. 

The one 'right ' is as fair as the other, 

The two go hand in hand ; 
And the sooner the factions free the fact, 

The better for the land. 



THE LARGER LIFE 45 

xxxiv 

The wage-payer that fears the labour Trusts 

Is facing from the sun, 
For the broader sweep of the principle 

Has only now begun. 

To deny to the men that do the work 

A unity of act, 
Is to follow the Social Atheist 

That tries to strangle fact. 

The injunction tool in the wage disputes 

That labour captains fear, 
Is a tool to be forced to the limit 

Till every fact is clear : 

Not part of the facts ; but all of the facts 

That enter in the cause, 
Till the real relationship rises 

To shape the equal laws. 



46 THE LARGER LIFE 

While the theorists talk arbitration 
As tho' 't were something new, 

The law courts are all arbitration courts 
From any point of view. 

That the labour Trusts will incorporate 

Is simple common sense, 
The Self-interest dictates the action 

For reasons of defence. 

The child labour in factories will cease 

Because it does not pay ; 
A style of preachment Morality loves 

And uses, day and day. 
xxxv 
The proposal to change the present form 

Of the organic State 
Thro' the hurried count of noses alone, 

Was sired by social hate. 



THE LARGER LIFE 47 

The delicate organs of control 

Are never changed that way ; 
As some Gallic Social Atheists learned 

When reason went astray. 

It is the maddest exaggeration 

That ere afflicted thought, 
Of the absolute majority myth 

By droning dreamers taught. 

Until intelligence is organized 

Thro' the diurnal pen, 
The Cheerful Idiot will hoist the flag 

Invented by the men 

That conceive the interest of the whole 

As turning on one fact, 
And overlook the diversified needs 

Compelling each class act. 



48 THE LARGER LIFE 

The controlling organs of government 

Are only one in kind; 
But their complexity of interest 

Has to be borne in mind, 
xxxvi 
The sense of a sovran community 

Is taken in two ways : 
Thro' the risen right of suffrage alone, 

The mere nose-counting phase, 

Or thro' the clear right of the organism, 

That passes in review 
The manifold interests of the class — ■ 

The antient and the new. 

Each plan collates the majority sense; 

But the concurrent form 
Votes interest along with the number, 

And seeks the social norm. 



THE LARGER LIFE 49 

The numerical method cannot mark 

The movement of the class ; 
And that movement has to be reckoned with 

In movements of the mass. 

XXXVII 

The theorists talk of majorities 

As tho' there were but one 
(And that the conventional nose-count !) 

In all the grill o' the sun. 

The profound distinction between the two, 

When overlooked or lost, 
Has foundered many a Ship of State 

And left it tempest-tost. 

The Socialist propaganda, so-called, 

That threats the smiling land, 
Is largely an anti-social crusade 

To cripple Self-command. 



50 THE LARGER LIFE 

The work of the unreal reformer 

Rarely outlives its day, 
For the superstitions that tire each age 

Pass, with the age, away. 

XXXVIII 

The peddling of ballots to every man 

Is not the destined reach 
That a scientific Democracy 

Has to pursue or teach. 

Democracy is a means, not an end : 

The end is moral right ; 
And the usurpations of ' government ' 

But bar men from the light. 

The universal suffrage idea 
Is meeting with some strain 

Thro' the complexity of interest 
That makes the nose-count vain. 



THE LARGER LIFE 51 

Already in careful localities 

The ballot is hedged round 
With proper and pleasing precautions 

To keep the action sound. 

The legislature, as elective king, 

Quite often fails thro' strife 
To re-present the free play of the Selves 

That called it into life. 

As no legislature can 'make' the law, 

The living facts make all; 
Tho' unnoted of washed and unwashed mobs 

When politicians bawl. 

An Act of Congress that contravened 

The scientific side, 
Would be ruled ultra vires by the courts, 

And sovranty denied. 



52 THE LARGER LIFE 

The political system will meet reform 

When Commerce cares to lead 
With daily intelligence organized 

Beyond the stomach-need, 
xxxix 
The essential truth of the universe, 

No clashing creeds can maim, 
Is that perfect Idea of Unity 

Christ perished to proclaim. 

'T is the death of the unrelated Self, 

The key of wider mind, 
That makes for order and perennial peace 

With all of humankind. 

The glad lesson of the Resurrection 

Shows men must die to live; 
And pass thro' the graves of their old, dead 
Selves 

To what the new Selves give. 



THE LARGER LIFE 53 

The unrelated are but bonden slaves : 

Only the bond are free. 
Life floods with freedom the minds that live 

The Law of Unity. 

One God, and one law, and one rounded whole, 

Compel the sure success 
That makes the problem of the whirling world 

Perplex poor mortals less. 

XL 

When the bonny Blue Flag went down in blood, 

The fighting men conceived 
That the final slave was bought at a price, 

And all good things achieved. 

With the vanishing years they have come to see 

Man's slavery as fact, 
That cannot be ' settled ' by sullen guns, 

Or Proclamation Act. 



54 THE LARGER LIFE 

Only his chance may be given to man ; 

Whatever freedom comes 
Must come thro* the play of the wider Self, 

Divorced from flags and drums. 

The thing called Freedom is freedom to act, 

No State can make it more. 
Nothing for nothing, is Nature's decree — 

The whole of human lore. 

Equality is the right to advance 

Along an ordered line: 
A privilege that of itself is naught — 

Tho' in the use, divine. 

XLI 

America is grinding its colours : 

Patient, tempered, austere : 
Unheeding the clamour of surging class, 

Untouched with doubt or fear. 



THE LARGER LIFE 55 

The style is set, and the studies all made, 

Of witcheries serene, 
For the stateliest social masterpiece 

This gallant world has seen. 

The clean thought of the marching Republic 

Will never go astray 
Thro' the chatter of Social Atheists 

That line the Right of Way : 

For the Strong Sons are still in possession, 

As strong men always are ; 
What the Weaklings deem the portent of doom 

Is but the morning star. 

All that saving Equality stands for, 

All that gives Freedom grace, 
Must turn, in the end, on the ordered fact — - 

Face unto living face. 



56 THE LARGER LIFE 

When the full play of Life is reported, 

Democracy will rise 
To a newer birth and a nobler aim 

Below the Western skies. 

XLII 

The real man of letters is en route, 

To laughing Truth he clings : 
He has turned from the mummery of words 

To poetry of things. 

The Choice of the Will in the old, good Cause, 

Front-fighter of his kind, 
He marks, with an insight that ' sees life whole,' 

The chainless march of mind. 

Ah, long was the way, and tragic the halts, 

From out old wrong to right : 
With glory of manhood and surge of swords 

Till right itself was might: 



THE LARGER LIFE 57 

Till the hemlock, the cross, and flame-girt stake, 

Of falsehood foul were past, 
And essential Truth had come to her own, 

Her healing own, at last. 

The trail of the triumph is dark with blood ; 

But action crowns the whole. 
The mob and the monarch have lost their power 

To still the seeing soul. 

XLIII 

The fretful chaos in literature 

Need vex no genial thought ; 
It is not the world but the book-writer 

That has to be re-taught. 

Who fails to pass thro' the books unto Life 

And use them as his tools, 
Is a slave to the tyranny of words, 

And one of letters' fools : 



58 THE LARGER LIFE 

When he hopes to fashion a book from books, 

His usefulness is past, 
For the touch of truth is the touch of life, 

And will be to the last. 

Since the colour-worker in words essayed 

To shape the perfect phrase; 
But three kinds of books have been given birth 

To cheapen blame or praise. 

The Force book, the Play book, and Reference 
book — 

The simple three, no more — 
Compose the reorganized library 

Of sound, artistic lore. 

By the use of the universal key — 

With common sense as tool — 
Every work is easily classified, 

Despite its claim or school. 



THE LARGER LIFE 59 

Many books that masqueraded for long 

As leaders of new thought, 
Have been used to kindle the kitchen fires — 

Unhonoured and unsought. 

While some that were scarcely noticed or read, 

Now with the classics smile, 
By the side of the masters of Man Talk, 

Whose words are winged with style. 

And others once noted as Play books 

Are seen at last to be 
The Force books of the Liberation War 

That set the Spirit free. 

Apart from the growing Reference books 

That busy Science breeds, 
The Force books and Play books are ever few 

That fit the keener needs : 



60 THE LARGER LIFE 

For nine-tenths of them all are shot-rubbish 

Of unrelated mind — 
The loud, God-gifted, hand-organ voices 

That charm the colour-blind. 

XLIV 

The newspaper men of the passing hour 

Deny that truth would pay, 
And, flouting the God of Life as It Is, 

Crucify Christ each day. 

In the food trade or the chemical line, 

Pure quality is thought 
To insure the larger and lasting sale, 

Thro' Self-interest wrought ; 

But in the news, or intelligence, trade, 

Diurnal dealers claim 
That adulteration makes for success, 

And aids the dollar game. 






THE LARGER LIFE 61 

And so they leaven their daily wares 

By colouring the fact, 
In the quaint belief that to doctor it 

Is proof of business tact. 

In the place of reports are opinions, 10 

And the rude Faction lie 
Coined in convenient anonymity; 

But wounding low and high. 

XLV 

The journals of the Tar and Feather school 
Have home-grown rules of right, 

And keep parties of private assassins 
To murder fames at sight. 

In the narrowing confines of their crawl 

They are as rank a crew 
As ever assailed a soaring career, 

Or made the false seem true. 



62 THE LARGER LIFE 

It never occurs to the Sewer guild 
That he who saves his soul 

May merit a flashing head-line far more 
Than one that Crimes control : 

The proud picture of virtue triumphant 

Is painted void of charm ; 
But how they chortle in vulgar glee 

At virtue come to harm ! 

XLVI 

The Obvious has been so exhausted 
That change itself is stale ; 

And yet no two of the Bludyers agree 
However brief the tale. 

They handle the free play of politics, 
O'er which ' reformers ' snore, 

As one would write of a base-ball game 
That never gave the score. 



THE LARGER LIFE 63 

And Commerce is seen as a swindling match 

Where only thieves succeed, 
With a premium on dishonesty 

To crown the cluttered creed. 

And every great captain of industry, 

With genius for command, 
Is conceived as a social pariah 

That preys upon the land. 

And each ' poor ' man is the victim of 'greed ' : 

And each ' rich ' man ' a foe ' : 
While the social system is but a ' fraud ' 

Built up of labour's 'woe.' 

Immersed in opinion they fail to note 

The daring of the day 
That gives to the individual need 

Freedom to serve or sway. 



64 THE LARGER LIFE 

They affect to fear multiform dangers 

No writer can make plain, 
And from false premise to wrong conclusion, 

Chorus a sunset strain. 

XLVII 

Yet other journals as freely assert 

That civic griefs are bred 
Of the * overpaid, opulent ' labour 

That lacks * a guiding-head. ' 

This brand of ' intelligence ' claims to see 

In the wage-paying class, 
Worn society's only salvation 

From ' the insurgent mass. ' 

As the ' heaven-born rich ' are the angels 

That toil for others' joy, 
The ' dishonest poor ' are pictured as knaves 

That struggle to destroy : 



THE LARGER LIFE 65 

So the 'rich ' are warned to organize 
Thro' fear of labour's 'greed; ' 

While labour is threatened with penalties 
For unity of deed. 

Apart from the largest advertisers 

Few courtesies are shown, 
Since genius is the talent of the dead, 

And simple faith unknown ! 

Each cackling class interest has ' organs ' 

To preach its parish plan ; 
But the general interest has none 

In all the Wrangling Clan. 
XLVIII 
The phrase ' independent journalism ' 

Is only so much bleat 

To mystify with Pecksniffian cant 

The plain man in the street. 
5 



66 THE LARGER LIFE 

There was more of quality in the news 

Some fifty years ago 
Than, with all their prattle of ' progress, ' 

The current journals show. 

The modern newspaper has come to be 

A kind of pedler's pack, 
With less grip of Life's moving unities 

Than rules the pedler's clack. 

The clean sense of convincing relation 

Is wholly lost to view 
In the hodge-podge of undigested slop 

Served in the daily stew. 

XLIX 
The thought of integrity in news 

(The truth entirely freed) 
Is one with the notion of government — 

The social daily need, 



THE LARGER LIFE 67 

Communication parallels Commerce, 

And Commerce, or the State, 
Never reaches full organization 

Till all the facts are ' straight. ' 

The unreflective action of men 

Is ever in advance 
Of him whose trade is to put it in words — 

While viewing it askance ! 

To profess that fact cannot be ordered 

Thro' systematic plan, 
Is an insult to the unified mind 

Of any thinking man : 

In the work of buying and selling it, 

Ignorance is a crime, 11 
For the basic questions of social peace 

Hinge on fact all the time. 



68 THE LARGER LIFE 

L 

When the arch-thief Tweed had looted New 
York 

Of everything in sight, 
The newspapers bragged of ' exposing ' him 

Thro' turning on the light. 

Under proper news organization 

No Tweed could last an hour, 
For scientific municipal news 

Would part him from his power. 

'T is easy to write of a broken bridge 

After the bridge is down ; 
But the task of Science is to foretell 

Its falling to the Town. 

To picture the play of Self-interest 

As unrelated deed, 
Is to overlook organization 

Thro' unity of need. 



THE LARGER LIFE 69 

LI 

The machinery of intelligence 

Is everywhere in place ; 
But the management of the news itself 

Lacks the accordant grace. 

The new wireless message, and telegraph, 

The talking telephone, 
The web printing-press, and the linotype, 

Are in relation shown ; 

But the ordering of the daily fact 

Has not advanced in kind, 
For the peddling of Rumour and Gossip 

Is not the work of mind. 

The thought has failed to keep step with the 
thing, 

And so the task of might 
Is in charge of the crude Opportunists 

That Science. has to fight. 



70 THE LARGER LIFE 

The growing ease of communication 

To full and ordered act 
Permits and compels the intelligence trade 

To level-up with fact. 

i 
While the pathways of thought unto object 

Are being cleared for men, 
Shall Science halt at the news-path of Life 
Where Chaos has her den ? 

LII 

In a trial for murder by poison, 

Chemist, jury, and judge, 
Type the perfect division of labour, 

From social chief to drudge. 

The Chemist stands for the fact in the case 

The Science, if you will — 
For he alone can order the fact 

With certainty of skill. 



THE LARGER LIFE 71 

The intelligence law identifies 

As constituting-fact, 
And identifies just in proportion 

As mind is free to act. 

Science has to single and systematize, 

And lodge in ordered hands, 
The universal division of labour 

For which the Chemist stands. 

When the system is seen in relation, 

Thro' unobstructed rule, 
The full facts may be brought to a centre, 

With intelligence as tool. 

Then the raw, unrelated Reporters 

Will yield to science men 
That can fashion the fire-new expression — 

Thro' the diurnal pen — 



72 THE LARGER LIFE 

For the larger and lordlier action 

That lacks the clearing creed 
Of the imperious regulation 

That fits the social need. 

LIII 

Ye shall know the truth, said the clear-eyed 
Christ, 

And truth shall make you free. 
But to free the truth is the daily task 

Of those that think — to see. 

While a constructive force, the mind of man, 

Is moving to its ends, 
Only organization frees the truth 

To which sound knowledge tends. 

The ordering of Science in common, 

The clearance of the act, 
Will force the news system to legislate, 

Or register, the fact. 






THE LARGER LIFE 73 

The electric wire and the telephone 

Provide the easy way 
To caucus class interests far and near, 

And vote them day and day. 

So the government, which is all Commerce, 

May grip the needs of Life, 
Till the futile friction 'twixt word and deed 

Has ceased to father strife. 

Then the fact shall be organ of the whole; 

But governed by the rule 
Of the careful, concurrent majority, 

To check the Common Fool ! 

Which action, again, to be workable, 

And with fair reason chime, 
Has to turn on the rulings of Science, 

Ordered in space and time. 



74 THE LARGER LIFE 

No problem is settled beyond debate 

By the nose-count alone; 
Nor thro' the brute force of the paid police 12 

That either side may own. 

Liv 
The greatest * sensation ' is that of truth, 

The lie is never bold, 
For the surface ' sensation ' is timid 

If inner truth is told. 

There are seldom two sides to a question, 

There 's only the inside; 
As the social surgeons will gently prove 

When fact is opened wide. 

The low-thoughted and rowdy ' sensations ' 

Are trivial and tame 
In contrast with those that the truth would free 

To fend the higher aim. 



THE LARGER LIFE 75 

The news captain is certain to appear, 

And when he comes in sight 
He will drive out the bungler and brawler, 

As day displaces night. 
LV 
The commanding thought of integrity 

Is rising clear and true; 
The mid-stage evolution of Commerce 

Invites the honest view. 

As intelligence is commodity, 

Dealers must understand 
That it pays to guard with a jealous care 

The honour of the brand : 

Not thro' the force of a moral precept, 

Or fear of future pain ; 
But because the truth line traces the way 

Unto the larger gain. 



76 THE LARGER LIFE 

To re-port a thing is to take it back 

To the diviner light, 
To the play of the governing principle 

That stakes the course aright. 

The Printing-press is the Altar of God : 

Its parish is the world : 
For the sovran Fact goes its regal way 

By steam and lightning hurled. 

LVI 

Education is contact with ordered life. 

The telephone is tool ; 
When it kisses the teacher's tactful lips, 

Children will run to school. 

Normal life is to enter the class-room, 
Touched with its care and play, 

With 'all of the news that is fit to print ' 
As text-book of the day. 



THE LARGER LIFE 77 

The Self may be put into relation 

Since Science found the key, 
So the children wise of the Second Birth 

Need teachers that can see. 

To note what is nearest the naked eye 

Is still the trying task, 
For behind the appearance is moving mind, 

The face is but the mask. 

As the great globe is nothing but spirit, 

So the spirit in man 
Holds the healing magic that lights it up 

With unity of plan. 

Not in Nature but in the observer 

Are mystery and worth, 
For none may see more, or less, than himself 

In all the rounded earth. 



78 THE LARGER LIFE 

Till a child can give back to its teacher 

A thing in terms of mind, 
Neither teacher nor pupil has functioned, 

And training is to find. 

The dignity of toil has to be shown 

In its related place, 
And the eager elective kings appraised 

In service to the race. 

While the Altruists gabble of virtue 

For virtue's sake alone, 
As tho' a deflection from virtue's path 

Would lead to mammon's throne; 

As fact may be taught in the newer light, 
True Selfness points the way, 

For an honest action involves reward 
As sundawn does the day. 



THE LARGER LIFE 79 

LVII 
The question of women's ' equality ' 

Turns on their mental ken ; 
There are royal and radiant spirits 

That dwarf the porcine men : 

And those women are never co-equal 

With men of mindless might; 
They rank as convincing superiors 

By every rule of sight. 

The much-daring marriage of maid to man 

Is but a social pact; 
And the law very properly functions 

To advertise the fact : 

So the mutual parties serve notice 

What unity has done, 
To the end that mim-mouthed Society 

May treat the two as one. 



80 THE LARGER LIFE 

The sacrament is in the relation, 

Not in the verbal creed ; 
For if the relationship dies the death, 

They are divorced indeed. 

Remains to publish the truth to the world, 

(As is the social due), 
Thro* the courts of record the law provides, 

And then — the one makes two. 
LVIII 

The dream has been of developing Self 

Since man took note of man, 
And the voice of the Vision has whispered 

In every kosmic plan. 

The moving principle in mortals all 

Has two aspects in mind ; 
But the play of the narrow and wider Self 

Is only one in kind. 



THE LARGER LIFE 81 

'T is the story of the Ninety and nine, 

Told of the straying sheep 
That was wandering out of relation, 

With none to guard or keep : 

The Good Shepherd went thro' the mental night, 
And down Death's darkling glen, 

To find the Principle that was lost 
And give it back to men. 

LIX 

So the Self is universal organ 

In ideal and fact, 
For the God-principle ever functions 

Thro' individual act. 

In the politics of the Altruists 

(Fast falling out of date) 

It is sought to take the mainspring from Life, 

And order from the State : 

6 



82 THE LARGER LIFE 

They conceive the play of Self-interest 

As counter to the whole ; 
And in that point of view are not Christians, 

For mind has lost control. 

They ever see two individuals 

In ' vice ' or ' virtue ' clad, 
In place of the one individual 

That may be ' good ' or ' bad. ' 

The bad and the good are questions of fact, — 

Man's attitude to life; 
He is ' good ' when in ordered relation, 

And ' bad ' when torn with strife. 

The poor crucified thief of the morning 

Saw things thro' alien eyes, 
But ere nightfall he found the relation 

That brought him paradise. 



THE LARGER LIFE 83 

The lack of the governing principle 

Had made the man a clod 
Till Jesus awakened the wider Self 

That passed, in peace, to God. 

LX 

The long hope of the sanguine ' reformer ' 

To legislate ' bad ' men 
To the love and practice of virtue 

Thro' a stroke of the pen, 

Traces back to the exaggeration 

Of single-centred rule, 
That conceived of mortals, viewed in the mass, 

As the Collective Fool. 

Vast numbers of people do not believe 

(As yet, at any rate) 
In the freedom of the social body 

That constitutes the State : 



84 THE LARGER LIFE 

They only believe in the * good '.police, 

And turning-off the light, 
Or the old-style suppression thro' statute 

Of every sin in sight. 

The tale of legislative oppression 

Needs tracing to its source, 
To the end that publicity may preclude 

The waste of social force. 

A convincing ground-movement to compel 

Statutory reform, 
Would give the voters a new idea, 

And take the Towns by storm. 

( LXI 

Fifty years of excessive repression 
Of gambling, lust, and 'drink,' 

Have resulted in failure so flagrant 
As to make State men think. 



THE LARGER LIFE 85 

The attempt has failed ; but has left behind 

A premium on vice, 
That the police, corrupted thro' statute, 

Is eager to entice. 

The twist in the policy would corrupt 

The best police on earth, 
For it violates the Law of the Self 

That rules men from their birth. 

The police is the victim of statutes 

That legislatures pass 
Thro' the bleat of the Social Atheists — 

The statute-breeding class. 

The ill-advised ' regulations ' are drawn 

To glad a given view, 
And are left unenforced to soothe the cry 

Of still another crew; 



86 THE LARGER LIFE 

But thro' their spasmodic resurrection 

By the ' reforming ' craft, 
Has come the corrupting development 

Of the policemen's * graft. ' 

LXII 

The antient, eternal duel of Sex 

No statute can suppress, 
Tho' the legislation of hypocrites 

Aids blackmail more or less. 

Any speculator is a gambler, 

And one that locks the doors 
Is no ' worse ' than one that juggles with stock 

Upon the open Bourse. 

The problem of ' drink ' will settle itself, 

As every problem must ; 
The chronic drunkard is shunned by his class, 

And blackballed by the Trust. 



THE LARGER LIFE 87 

An Illinois statute that lingers on, 

Makes it a penal crime 
To hire or harbour a coachman that * drinks,' 

At any place or time! 

As a matter of plain, prosaic fact, 

Drunkards are turned away 
Because their retention is troublesome, 

And does not please or pay. 

So that is the law which governs the case, 

The sure, restraining guide, 
That, one with the play of the watchful Self, 

Will never be denied. 

LXIII 

The social body needs freedom to move, 

Tho* painful Prudes may scoff, 
The statutes but hamper the larger law — 

The old clamps must come off. 



88 THE LARGER LIFE 

Unless Lady Nature denies men wit 

To fend their lives from flaw, 
Their immediate surroundings are ever 

The true restraining law. 

The timid sense of danger called justice 
May turn the Fool from strife ; 

But this wholesome restraint as to conduct 
Comes of contact with life. 

Neither men nor women are angels yet, 

Utopia is far, 
And the call is to shun the impossible, 

And see Things as They Are. 

True morality passes by the point 

Of the prevailing creed, 
To face, with the logic of all the facts, 

The living social need. 



THE LARGER LIFE 89 

The preachers of perfectibility 

For our imperfect race 
Have a touching faith in its wickedness 

And lack of saving grace. 

Will it never occur to the meddler, 

Warring in idle ways, 
That most men are ' good, ' as ' reformers ' are, 

Simply because it pays? 

LXIV 

The common notion of brotherly love 

(By dreamers understood) 
Makes it a condition of Utopia, 

Where every man is * good. ' 

When told that a given mortal is ' good/ 

Science says : Good for what ? 
As the unrelated, or barren, ' good ' 

Is touched with moral rot : 



go THE LARGER LIFE 

While to speak or write of Utopia 

Betrays the static thought 
That has no place in a universe 

With ceaseless motion fraught. 

The Do unto others as you would have 

The others do to you, 
That Altruists quote to clinch their creed, 

And clear their muddled view, 

Is the most Selfish maxim yet uttered 

In all the tides of Time, 
For Christ is as scientific and sane 

As is the Thought sublime. 

There lurks in it the brave definition 

Of true brotherly love, 
Whether in the Study, or busy Mart 

Or by the ' stream of Dove ' : 



THE LARGER LIFE gi 

It is IDENTITY OF INTEREST 

That lights the ordered ways; 
Men love each other thro' no maudlin bleat — 
They love because it pays ! 

With this accepted, the spiritual power 

Reveals itself as fact, 
And enters into the life of the world 

To shape the kindly act. 

It is the breaking down of convention 

And gay divorce from cant, 
That sweep to the merciful Silences 

The old, unsocial rant. 

The word ' unselfish ' will fade from the books 

In tales of peace and strife, 
As it stands for that unthinkable thing — 

' Disinterest ' in Life. 



92 THE LARGER LIFE 

Who denies the unity principle 

That Jesus taught the race, 
Is crucified by it upon the spot, 

Without a moment's grace. 

That is the Law of the Spirit in Man, 

Of which the Force books tell, 
For in mind is the highest heaven he knows, 

In mind, his lowest hell. 

LXV 

As all sound Religion is one with life, 

Mind is divining-rod; 
The age of the Symbol is passing out, 

Men crave the living God : 

No mummery of the Dead Hand decree 

Divorces Him from life. 
Gone is the lesion of a ' good ' apart, 

That bred unrest and strife. 



THE LARGER LIFE 93 

The true Churches are ordered of unity, 
And one Thought rules the whole. 

The triple confusion has ceased to cloud 
The answer-searching soul : 

For the law that the honest preachers hold 

That trade in saving grace, 
Is one with him that tracks the marching Orbs, 

And thinks in time and space. 

Religion is sweeter since men perceived 

The monstrous moral crime 
Of teaching a fixity in the world 

That 's moving all the time. 

The mind of man is no dual affair 

As Primitives have taught, 
With an air-tight and cosy compartment 

For theologic ' thought ' : 



94 THE LARGER LIFE 

It is open to every fact of Life 

By new conditions timed, 
For nothing is sacred beneath the sun 

Save integrity of mind. 
LXVI 
My God is not of a ghostly Beyond, 

Throned in a golden seat ; 
Ah ! one is He with the Spirit of Life, 

And nearer than kneeling feet. 

And here, where He is, is heaven to some, 

The happy, placeless state 
That is born of the clearing consciousness, 

Untouched with chance or fate. 

It is plain to see that each passing day 

Is Judgment Day to all, 
As the wider Self struggles for freedom, 

And inner Voices call. 



THE LARGER LIFE 95 

No asphodel blooms in the gracious land, 

No seraphs haunt the place; 
But the joy of a Growing Purpose lights 

The glory of its face. 



EPILOGUE 

What is truth ? cried the curious Pilate, 

And would not pause reply. 
The twentieth wave of the ages waits 

The answer to that cry. 

But the sad and solemn Grave is voiceless, 

And Purple Distance dumb. 
Trust in God ! the unfaltering answer 

Shall yet of Science come. 



96 THE LARGER LIFE 

Without pity or ethic pretension 

She plows up weed and briar, 
And no corner shall fail of her furrows 

To stead the World's Desire. 

From her measured and slow-moving footsteps 

Grow corn and healing flowers, 
And to limit her ultimate conquests 

Is not for finite Powers. 



NOTES 

Note i, Page 4. 

The unities thro' Commerce are forming. 

* This commerce is a giant clock-work process, compared 
with which the old sea-traffic is as crude as the Columbus 
clock to current time-pieces. It is an evolution that gives 
promise of far greater complexity, of becoming a system of 
members so delicate that not one invoice can go astray but 
the loss shall be known and appreciated by the whole organ- 
ism. Contrast this era with the dying age of sea-traffic : the 
era of publicity and logic, with the age of secrecy, of mystery 
and myth, when the loss of a great ship was a vague, far-off 
calamity, that only years could verify. It is an evolution 
of childhood into manhood ; of boyish dreams into manly 
ambitions.' 

Note 2, Page 6. 

A crystal thought is the concept that rose 
Thrd study of man's frame. 

'The State organization projected by man must necessarily 
have been patterned, in respect of its mode of working, after 
that of his own body. The government of the human body 

7 



98 THE LARGER LIFE 

is comprised in the sympathetic and cerebro-spinal nervous 
systems, which operate as a unity in relation to a common end. 
The cerebro-spinal system identifies as the legislature, or 
law-finding organ, of the human body, its function being to 
search out and co-ordinate the particular environment of each 
individual that clear direction may result, and this whether the 
problem is to measure time through the science of astron- 
omy, to invent the steam-engine, or to keep a dinner appoint- 
ment. The sympathetic nervous organization, with the solar 
plexus as central office, identifies as the banking system of the 
human body, its function being to direct and control the 
nutrition of the body as a physical organism. Having regard 
to the government, or regulation, of the social body, interest 
centres in the development of the legislature or parliament, 
and the bank. The legislature corresponds to the cerebral 
nervous system in the human body, while the machinery of 
banking, with the clearing-house as controlling centre, identi- 
fies as the government of the sympathetic or nutritive sys- 
tem.' — Franklin Ford. 

Note 3, Page 9. 

Commerce is the moving Spirit of Man. 

The hour has gone by for serious writing on the social 
question built up of hard and fast distinctions between princi- 
pal and interest. Some writers profess to see on one side 
profit-sharing, and on the other what they are pleased to call co- 
operation. The distinction exists only in the books ; it is not 






NOTES 99 

a fact of Life. There are not commerce and co-operation. 
It is all commerce. A given division of labour may be brought 
to greater co-operation ; but only through making it more 
commercial. 

Note 4, Page 13. 

The division but marks the relation. 

' God will deliver the world over to divisions.' — Hebrew 
Bible. 

Note 5, Page 16. 

// is only division of labour. 

Division of labour in social organization has been recog- 
nized in a partial way for over a century ; but it is only now 
that the full sweep of the principle is reaching recognition. 
The best that Mr Adam Smith could do in his day was to 
write of the division in a given industry, as in the making of 
pins. With telephonic conditions, the whole business of gov- 
ernment classifies under the principle. In this light the 
social body is disclosed as object; the various functions 
in the State are one with the organs of commerce. 

Note 6, Page 22. 

Direct rule by the individual 
Is passing into act. 

' Up to this day we have allowed to statesmen a paramount 
social standing. . . . We cannot extend this deference to 

t.rf 0, 



ioo THE LARGER LIFE 

them any longer. The secret cannot be kept that the seats of 
power are filled by underlings, ignorant and timid to a degree 
to destroy all claim, excepting that on compassion, to the so- 
ciety of the just and the generous. . . . Their vocation is a 
presumption against them among well-meaning people. 
The superstition respecting office is going to the ground. 
The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very 
little affected by the activity of legislators. What great 
masses of men wish done, will be done ; and they do not wish 
it for a freak; but because it is their state and natural end. 
There are now other energies than brute force, other than 
political, which no man can in future allow himself to disre- 
gard. There are direct conversation and influence. A man is 
to make himself felt by his proper force. The tendency of 
things runs steadily to this point, namely, to put every man on 
his merits, and to give him so much power as he naturally 
exerts — no more, no less. Of course, the timid and base 
persons, all who are conscious of no worth in themselves, and 
who owe all their place to the opportunities which the old or- 
der of things allowed them, to deceive and defraud men, shud- 
der at the change, and would fain silence every honest voice, 
and lock up every house where liberty and innovation can be 
pleaded for. They would raise mobs, for fear is very cruel. 
But the strong and healthy yeomen and husbands of the land, 
the self-sustaining class of inventive and industrious men, fear 
no competition or superiority. Come what will, their faculty 
cannot be spared.' — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



NOTES ioi 

Note 7, Page 25. 

77ie Social Atheists ' view with alarm. 1 

There be that have mussed over the traditional notion of 
representative government to an extent that neutralizes their 
natural wit. With them, one must ' go to the legislature ' to be 
a representative. Failing to distinguish the individual as 
organ of the God-principle, their cult amounts to social athe- 
ism. In the complex movement of Life each person is, in 
aspect, day and day a representative, as a common principle 
runs through all, that of the mind itself. Having no univer- 
sal by which to order their facts, the Social Atheists, or Self- 
styled Socialists, are unable to see Democracy in movement, 
ever advancing to more effective organization. It is not for 
them to observe the wondrous pageantry of action, to note the 
point gained and from that to mark the future. In place of 
this they have a vague sentimentalism. They like to write of 
'the people,' the prepossession being that things are done 
in some way other than through the individual. 

Note 8, Page 29. 

The Self and the general good are touched 
With kindred hopes and fears. 

1 No one can be perfectly free till all are free ; no one can 
be perfectly moral till all are moral ; no one can be perfectly 
happy till all are happy.' — Herbert Spencer. 



102 THE LARGER LIFE 



Note 9, Page 38. 

There the private and public good are seen 
Serenely unified. 

1 Writers on the philosophy of politics use the word indi- 
vidualistic, and speak of the individualistic point of view. The 
opposite is the organic point of view, though the book-people 
have not progressed so far, since the phrasing social organ- 
ism, or social body, is to them only a metaphor. They are 
still asking whether there is a social body. The plane of fact 
is beyond them. The idea of an organic, inter-related, bank- 
ing or credit system flies in the face of the merely individual 
experience. Thus, for an individual to lend five dollars to 
a friend, which is to certify the friend's credit to that extent, 
the certifier must have saved that much money. This pre- 
sents the so-called individualistic point of view. But the 
incoming universal banking, whose centres of registry and 
certification (credit offices) are everywhere, does not need 
to save money at all in order to lend or give credit ; it is centre 
of authority in the money system and, therefore, makes its 
own instrument ( = money) for transferring credit through the 
universalized ( = legalized) check book in the moment of the 
transaction. The Bank appears as a universal organ in 
the State, or system of organs. Thus we realize the two 
points of view.' — Franklin Ford. 



NOTES 103 

Note io, Page 6i. 

In the place of reports are opinions. 

The touching feature of current journalism is that the news- 
paper men ' edit ' the news-columns, colouring the daily fact 
to chime with the particular class interest which they are 
paid to re-present. They are not content to air opinion in 
the editorial page alone. 

Note ii, Page 67. 

In the work of buying and selling it, 
Ignorance is a crime. 

Sanguine ignorance, which, in matters of morals, exten- 
uates the crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of 
the first order. The failure to detect the necessity of a new 
co-ordination, is proof of imposture in the news, or mov- 
ing intelligence, trade. 

Note 12, Page 74. 

No problem is settled beyond debate 

By the nose-count alone ; 

Nor thro' the brute force of the paid police . 

' Government began, the social relation came to view, with 
the appearance of one who was surer and quicker than his 



104 THE LARGER LIFE 

fellows in determining fact, in finding out the way or law 
The strong man in the first instance was the direction-finder, 
the element of physical force being always secondary. 
At no time could might be entirely separated from right. An 
instrument of government must at the same time be an organ 
of intelligence. The soldier or policeman is incidental to 
any scheme of government; he is an attendant upon the 
court of arbitration. The knocker-out in a hotel is an im- 
portant personage, relative to the hotel, but he does not 
direct the business.' — Franklin Ford. 



MAY 12 1904 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

015 897 017 A • 



